Final Fantasy XIV
 

I have (finally) actually gotten around to actually starting it :joker: and... and look...

https://i.imgur.com/hN6EcSJ.png

:joker::joker::joker: Just look at the li'l buddy! He is my greatest creation I genuinely adore him. I tried a few different characters and they just weren't gelling and then I created this guy and it was love at first sight. He is my new best friend.

It's a really good game, although you have to have patience with the story, the A Realm Reborn stuff is pretty bland for the most part, but the story really takes off in the expansions. Shadowbringers is one of the best FF stories period.

I think you can actually skip it and start with a level 50 character if you buy Shadowbringers but I feel like jumping in without learning the game mechanics would probably not be the best idea. Also just running and jumping around with this li'l fella is entertaining in itself. All cower in fear... Billy Fireball incoming.

A Realm Reborn is a bit basic, but it does do a lot of important world building (they shortened it significantly too!)

Final Fantasy XIV
 

It does hand out xp like birthday cake, I assume that’s why. “hey could you move that box 3 feet to the left? Thanks friend, here have two full levels” :joker:

Oh yeah, they did that too, the main story now gives enough XP to take you to 50 :laugh: (I think they changed it so it is the same in the other expansions too)

You'll miss out if you skip ARR, it's a grind to get through but it's important to the story. Once you hit Heavensward, the story takes off and never really stops.

Things were so simple when I just had like 2 spells, now I have 7 or 8 and get flustered :bawling:.

On the plus side, I now have the Glamour ability thing so Billy is back in his awesome threadz.

I want to dye his gloves red though.

https://i.imgur.com/oK6SV1Y.png

I forget when they dye quest unlocks, its all changed since I did it xD

Back in the day you didn't learn how to glam clothes until like, level 50, so you had to spend all that time in clown clothes, it was horrific.

The dye quest is in Vesper Bay, I believe. You need to give a woman an orange juice and she'll teach you how to dye your clothes.

Also BLM becomes quite involved in the later levels (around level 60 or so, I believe), so if you want a magic job that's a lot more simple to play, I'd recoomend Red Mage which is available in Ul'Dah when you hit level 50, it also starts at level 50 so you don't need to level it up to carry on with the level 50 quests.

Next main patch (13 April) will be the 'beta' for the PS5 version, free to upgrade for PS4 players. Includes instantanious loading, higher quality UI, 4K resolution and 60fps. There will be more additions as time goes on too, this is just to start off with. (I'd also expect high end PC players will get the UI refresh).

All this extra stuff and the PS5 file size will shrink 15gb

The UI scaling is ropey so that can only be a good thing, I have to assume it scales even worse at 4K. I traded my 4K for more FPS on my PC (165hz :drool: ) but even at 1440p the UI blurs on the upscale.

Here's some of the UI, with clearer tab pics
https://i.imgur.com/t3eYge4l.png

also, remastered zone text xD
https://i.imgur.com/agNptH7.png

The load times and stuff will be nice, but there's only so much they can do with the graphics, this is the third Playstation console this game has lived through after all. I'm happy about the file size shrinking though, given PS5's limited space.

Are the load times particularly bad on PS4? I can’t say I’ve noticed ANY on PC (on an m.2 SSD) so I’d imagine that’ll be the same for PS5 as that’s the SSD tech it uses, more or less.

Load times are fine, but on PS5 they'll be like 1-2 seconds. They do plan more changes in the future, similar to how DirectX changes happened a few years back (which came to PS4)

PS5 upgrade info
https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...cc9195ad83629b

I hate to ask also but does the voice acting ever improve? I don't mind non-voice-acted bits personally but the parts so far where there IS spoken dialogue.. ... .. it's pretty awful :joker:. I think we're spoiled these days because voice acting is a MASSIVE industry now and we're used to quite high standards... like you can still identify exceptional voice acting but it's VERY rare for it not to be at least to a decent standard even in non-AAA games... but some of it here is what I would call "late PS1/early PS2" voice acting.

That said, Watchdogs Legion had some truly abysmal lines of dialogue and it's less than 6 months old :hehe:.

A lot of the voices change in Heavensward, everyone suddenly becomes British :laugh: It's an improvement.

Yeah, they switched from an American voice studio to a English one, so it improves massively - Actors such as the ones who played Roose Bolton, Yara Greyjoy and Gendry Baratheon from GoT are in the cast, among many others xD Notably though, different regions are given different accents, such as Ala Mhigan's having a more northern accent

But there are no Dwarves to be Scottish. We all know that, naturally, Dwarves must be Scottish.

Although I think in Dragon Age the dwarves are American? That took some getting used to.

Instead of Scottish dwarves, there are Scottish fairies eventually :laugh:

Dragon Age was another one that switched to an english cast for the most part for the sequels I think, like I can remember the elves becoming welsh in DA2.

How's the grind going? Is ARR getting you down yet?

I'm only like level 25... it hasn't been too grindy for the mostpart, I think I've only had to stop and actively level up twice between a combo of main quest, guild questline and a few sidemissions that can be sort of picked up and completed "along the way".

Oh, this is useful to remember!
https://img.finalfantasyxiv.com/lds/...9e1c6fff6f.jpg

The story quests will get you down, even once you do the main bit of ARR, you've got around 100 quests for the five patch stories that preceded Heavensward, but thankfully the plot becomes very interesting in those patch stories (although you'll still have to deal with the dodgy voice acting and 'pray return to the Waking Sands' every five minutes).

HW is straight fire though, it's worth the grind.

The patch stories are far easier to do with flying added now, once you finish the base story